Sports Direct shareholders to vote on payment to John Ashley

Sports Direct shareholders are to vote on an £11m payment to the brother of billionaire founder Mike Ashley. An internal probe looking into the retailer's affairs has found that John Ashley was underpaid. John Ashley, Mike's elder brother, left his job as the retailer's IT chief in 2015 to join a company that had a contract with Sports Direct. Mike Ashley said on Friday: "I intend to voluntarily abstain from the vote on whether or not John should receive the money that he would otherwise have earned at Sports Direct if he were not my brother." The purpose of the review, led by Sports Direct's legal advisors RPC and independent accountants Smith & Williamson, was to investigate "Total amounts paid in money and in kind to John Ashley, which had been called into question given his position as brother of Mike Ashley".